Nick Tavares: Scab refs introduced NFL to anarchy

Sunday

Sep 30, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Today, football will kick off in Buffalo, Detroit, Kansas City, Arizona, Green bay and elsewhere, and all these NFL venues will be free of the Foot Locker referees that held the game hostage for three weeks.

NICK TAVARES

Today, football will kick off in Buffalo, Detroit, Kansas City, Arizona, Green bay and elsewhere, and all these NFL venues will be free of the Foot Locker referees that held the game hostage for three weeks.

But it's not without a little sadness that I watch the regular referees return. The NFL is a rigid enterprise. Seeing the league thrown into chaos at almost every level because of a labor dispute with referees — and from there, the league's decision to replace them with scabs who were underqualified to almost dangerous levels — was a little fun from a distance.

The introduction of anarchy was refreshing for a league that for so long came down harder on touchdown dances than hits to the head, and that embraced bizarre parallels to war and battle such as the notion of head coaches as tactical geniuses and quarterbacks as field generals. It knocked the game from its pedestal and gave it a little random humanity that more closely mirrors real life.

"Was that a touchdown or an interception? Wait, was that holding? Then why wasn't that other thing holding? Are those two guys punching each other? Why isn't anyone stopping this? WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE?!"

It's all over now, and the hope is that this serves as a teachable moment for the league. The NFL and the referees finally came to an agreement on Wednesday. In three short weeks, fans of every team had something to complain about, even in the games their teams won. Penalties were called with a touch slightly less predictable than a Magic 8-Ball. But the fight is over, for now.

And in the end, it was a futile one for the league. The owners went in bent on breaking the referees union, because they thought they could. They wanted to take their pensions away because they had ended pensions for many of their other full-time employees. But why is the league ending pensions for any of their employees? This is not a firm struggling in a harsh economic climate. This is a $10 billion operation that is somehow shielded from slipping consumer wages and public boredom.

Referees are part-time employees, technically. But they will now be paid an average of $205,000 annually by 2019 not because of the number of months they put in the job versus their full-time gigs at law firms and medical institutions, but rather because of the skill they bring to a multibillion dollar industry. The proof was in the fact that these games were clearly inferior, yet ratings, attendance and attention were never significantly affected. There was, and remains, a demand for football in this country that borders on the obsessive.

Obviously, $205,000 is a tremendous amount of money. But for an industry so lucrative, it was not worth the fight that the owners started. The fight became more important than providing a good product for the customers (the fans) or a safe work environment for their employees (the players).

So, the three weeks of the 2012 season in which junior college referees stepped in and struggled among the bright lights and blood-curdling screams beneath facemasks becomes a memory and a lesson. The real referees have already returned to standing ovations in Baltimore on Thursday, the fans and players now all-too appreciative of their efforts and skill.

Hopefully, the league is as well. And if they try to pull a stunt like that again, maybe next time the fans will say, "no," to anarchy and chaos. The only thing giant organizations understand is a hit to the wallet, and the threat of such a financial backlash is what solved this. Not preserving the integrity of the game, as commissioner Roger Goodell has stated so publicly, and not because of player safety.

The new deal runs for eight years. By 2019, we'll know whether the league learned better than to mess with the on-field production, or if the fans have learned to just move on.

Nick Tavares' column appears Sundays in The Standard-Times and at SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached at 508-979-4520 and at ntavares@s-t.com.

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